FREE N-up PDF imposition using OS X Preview

[skrilla]

Hello, I'm new here so I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet.

I've been looking for a FREE solution for simple PDF imposition for a while now. I just noticed that the new version of Preview included in Snow Leopard (Preview 5.0) has a new feature in its Print Dialog box. You can now select "Images per page:" and below that, a check box for "Print X copies per page". (I included a screen shot) Using these options and re-saving as a PDF = FREE imposition.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

I would urge serious caution in use of this wonderful free solution.

First of all, MacOS X Preview is hardly a reliable, robust processor and displayer of PDF, especially graphically rich PDF that would typically be found in prepress situations.

Secondly, refrying PDF (the process of creating PDF from existing PDF) by printing to PostScript and distilling that PostScript back into PDF is strongly discouraged and not recommended by Adobe for a number of reasons, including loss of live transparency and color management issues.

Finally, beginning with MacOS X 10.6, printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance to create PostScript and direct it automatically to the Distiller is no longer an option. (This was an Apple issue, not Adobe's choice!)

- Dov

 

[wonderings]

There are some very cheap good imposition software add ons for indesign out there. I have 2, croptima and inplate. Croptima was under $100 I believe and works great for your standard stuff and saves me alot of time. Easy to use add on in indesign.

 

[LoneGoose]

Alas, if I post a reply to this thread it'll get kicked back up the 'recents' list, while it should really be left to sink deeper and deeper down into the forum's history; and hopefully forgotten there.

skrilla, if you absolutely positively have to do manual impositioning, you're much safer using a DTP program.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

There are some very cheap good imposition software add ons for indesign out there. I have 2, croptima and inplate. Croptima was under $100 I believe and works great for your standard stuff and saves me alot of time. Easy to use add on in indesign.

Quite frankly, InDesign is not the place to do PDF imposition. It is not an imposition program and can be lossy for some detailed aspects of placed PDF (especially PDF/X output rendering intents and transparency flattening color spaces).

If you don't have imposition software as an integral part of your PDF workflow / RIP system, a better place to do imposition is in Acrobat itself. You might want to take a look at Quite Software's Quite Imposing and Quite Imposing Plus plug-ins for Acrobat. Yes, they are not "cheap" but then again, it isn't amateur hour software either. Highly functional, highly reliable. (For the record, I am not paid or otherwise compensated to endorse their software!)

Editorial

The emphasis on "cheap" in this thread is highly disturbing to me. Amazing how many print professionals drool over expensive presses and other "hardware" but continually bitch and moan about the cost of software, but will spend many hours of their time avoiding software maintenance or purchase of professional products that will readily solve their problems. They forget the value of their own time and the cost of having to redo work.

- Dov

 

[mattbeals]

Dov, I absolutely agree... Iron is "sexy", you can brag about how wide the units are and how many you have, how many sheets per hour. But you can't brag about having imposition software or desktop publishing simply because it doesn't have the same gravitas for lack of a better term.

 

[Joe]

If someone thinks that is "free imposition software" then someone doesn't know what imposition software is.

 

[Ultimate]

Best professional imposition plug-in for Acrobat, MAC or Windows: Absolutely Imposing at only $395.

Download a free demo on our web site: www. imposition.com

Ray Duval
Ultimate Technographics
SEE US AT IPEX 2010: Stand 12D100

 

[claude72]

Finally, beginning with MacOS X 10.6, printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance to create PostScript and direct it automatically to the Distiller is no longer an option.

PostScript+Distiller is still the best practice to make PDF for printers who cannot afford for your last PrintEngine RIP.

(This was an Apple issue, not Adobe's choice!)

(as every people working with computers) It's exactly what I hear since almost 20 years that I work with computers: each time that a problem occurs in a computer, involving 2 different software's editors, both companies always reject all the responsability on the other company... so you can repeat that's Apple is responsable, so many people have been so often tricked that they don't believe you!

And it is easy to accuse Apple, but it is not Apple that removes the "AdobePDF9" PPD from the users hard-drives... but it's some Adobe's stuff, intentionally made by Adobe to stop the users to go on using PostScript + Distiller! If Adobe had been so innocent, Adobe would have left the PPD for the users who need it!

Amazing how many print professionals drool over expensive presses and other "hardware" but continually bitch and moan about the cost of software

Let me explain something to you: when we (printers) buy presses or some other kind of hardwares, we know that we will be able to use it enough long time to pay it and we know that we will earn some money with it before being obliged to replace it...

... but your softwares are so expensive, so quickly obsolete and your scientific organization of the incompatibility to oblige the users to always buy your newest softwares is so efficient that some little companies (like mine) are obliged to buy new softwares before having finished to pay the previous stuff (or before having earn money with the previous versions)!!!

... and in many cases we earn more money by spending some more time to deal with work-arounds and old sofwares and old RIPs, that by using new adapted softwares/RIPs.

And that's not amazing: simply open your eyes and look at the real world, you'll see that it's only a sad consequence of Adobe's economical choices: actually, Adobe and all that stuff needed with Adobe's softs for DTP are simply ruining the little printers!!!
... and that's why we "moan about the cost of software"... and especially about the excessive cost of Adobe's softwares for the too short time that they can be used!!!

 

[Keith]

And it's easier to lease a machine than it is to lease software. I'm planning on building a new workstation and the software I want to put on it will easily cost three times as much as the hardware.

There's a lot of good points on both sides....

 

[pmhapp]

poor skrilla. first post, and now he's probably scarred.

 

[Keith]

poor skrilla. first post, and now he's probably scarred.

Now that you mention it, I feel bad for him. Sometimes, I feel there are a lot of members of this forum that do nothing but super high end, best in the universe printing for people with deep, deep pockets and the rest of us are retarded. There are buyers and there are printers out there that don't do or want super duper complex pms matching with crazy transparencies. 75% of my clients want something simple and QUICK. They don't care that PMS 289 isn't dark enough. As long as the price is fair and you get it done in time. If that suggestion of Skrilla's is easy enough, then use it for easy work. It's like meeting someone for the first time and instead of shaking their hand, you kick them in the nuts and tell them their idea is dumb.

 

[WiseGuy]

Now that you mention it, I feel bad for him. Sometimes, I feel there are a lot of members of this forum that do nothing but super high end, best in the universe printing for people with deep, deep pockets and the rest of us are retarded. There are buyers and there are printers out there that don't do or want super duper complex pms matching with crazy transparencies. 75% of my clients want something simple and QUICK. They don't care that PMS 289 isn't dark enough. As long as the price is fair and you get it done in time. If that suggestion of Skrilla's is easy enough, then use it for easy work. It's like meeting someone for the first time and instead of shaking their hand, you kick them in the nuts and tell them their idea is dumb.

I agree with Keith.... us older/more seasoned members should remember we're here to help new members not crucify them. His suggestion is cool for right type of work. Not something that would be used for plates, but useful for some lower end uses and there are probably some other members that didn't know that existed on the MacOS.

 

[claude72]

Just to finish my post...

Quite frankly, InDesign is not the place to do PDF imposition. It is not an imposition program and can be lossy for some detailed aspects of placed PDF (especially PDF/X output rendering intents and transparency flattening color spaces).

You're right... but sometimes InDesign is the best (or the less worst) last solution...: I often receive "dirty" PDFs made from office softwares (Publisher, Word, OpenOffice) either directly exported from these softs, or "distilled" by some crappy free PDF-izer (like PDFcreator) and I often have problem to impose these PDF in Acrobat 8:

- ImposerPro (ex ALAP, then Quark, and now stopped) often doesn't succeed to built the imposed PDF, returning an "Invalid operand: something missing" error

- and Quite Imposing, even being highly functional and highly reliable has often problems with such crappy PDFs...

... for example, on a serie of 5 PDFs, all exported from Publisher by the same client, ImposerPro returned an error and Quite Imposing made a strange conversion of the black from N=100 in the original PDF to CMJN black in the imposed PDF, with absolutely no way to retransform the CMJN black in N=100...
(althought the output preview of Acrobat and the preview of the RIP both showed a CMJN black, PitStop "affirmed" that it was a N=100 black and, of course, refused to convert it!!!)

... and in these cases the easiest way to finally cope with that kind of PDFs is to import all the pages in an InDesign template and image from InDesign.

(but there are two worst methods:
- import the PDF in an XPress template,
- or more worst, rasterize the PDF in Photoshop...
... and if you compare with objectivity, in fact, imposing PDF with InDesign is not such a bad method!!!)

Secondly, refrying PDF (the process of creating PDF from existing PDF) by printing to PostScript and distilling that PostScript back into PDF is strongly discouraged and not recommended by Adobe for a number of reasons, including loss of live transparency and color management issues.

Again, you're right... but refrying a PDF is also one of the solutions to image a recalcitrant PDF, being often THE last solution just before the rasterization in Photoshop...

... and again, compared to rasterization and shitty pixels-text printing, the simple loss of live transparency and color management issues are only little details making the refrying not such a bad solution!!!

(and the refrying is sometimes the only one method to image a crappy Publisher-PDFcreator PDF, or to image an exported PDF with a PostScript RIP)


*******

Dov, your advices are judicious in the pure theorie, but there is a big difference between the heaven of Adobe's theories, an heaven where everybody has the latest softwares, where all the printers have the latest RIP, where DTP is only made by skillful users with the appropriate Adobe's software, and where PDFs are always perfectly generated, only by experienced users and only with Adobe's recommanded methods...

... and the hell of the real life where only some people are able to afford for ALL the latest Adobe's new technologies and all the others have to cope with what they can buy, where "DTP" is done by anybody able to push the keys of a keyboard and move a mouse, with any software able to display pictures and write text on a screen, where softwares are full of bugs, and where (because Adobe's has imposed the PDF as an exchange format to send jobs to the printers) today everybody is sure to have to do a PDF for the printer and so many people just click on anything-making-a-PDF wherever they can find it...

... and the real life is far, far, far away from Adobe's official recommanded methods, and that dealing daily with PDF is often a daily nightmare!!!

Come in my print-shop, I'll show you my "museum of horrors" you'll be horrified to see the awful shit that people are able to make with your marvellous softwares!
(no irony in the word "marvellous": despite some painfull bugs, Adobe softs are really wonderfull tools for printing)

 

[vniehaus]

I've been using Indesign for imposing PDFX files since ID was released and allowed spot color PDF files to be imported and separately correctly. With the help of some AppleScripts I've automated it quite a bit. But I'm needing more automation since I am now estimating, prepress, press, and some bindery. All I need is a PDF imposing tool that will allow me to throw the output into my ID templates. We are a non-profit in-house print shop without the cash flow for fancy stuff. We are still using film for example. I respect Dov and Matt's advice. Wish the whole world worked like that. I would love a Adobe PDF RIP that imposes.